Taking on NYC one run at a time

Island Hopping: Bohol, Philippines

I’ve never even heard of Bohol until I was told we booked a tour there. Bohol is the name of an island that’s most famous for the Chocolate Hills. By ferry boat, its two hours away from the Cebu ferry terminal.

So we all took a 6am ferry and arrived by 8am, greeted by our driver/tour guide. We drove us around in a huge van that seemed to hold 10-12 people but there were only 5 passengers including myself. So we had our own private little tour. (Thanks to my aunt for booking it!)

There were a ton of things on our itinerary so here are some highlights.

Tarsier Sanctuary

I had seen little stuffed animals that looked like monkeys in tourist gift shops in Manila but I had no idea the Philippines was famous for tarsiers. They used to be lumped into the monkey family but are now with regular primate families. Tarsiers are known as the world’s smallest primate. They’re really cute and little and quiet. They sleep with their eyes open and can turn their head 180 degrees side to side.

I mean, it’s just so cute! Look at those eyes!

Manmade forest

Apparently, mahogany forests are popular in the Philippines but this forest is interesting because it’s manmade. My tourguide mentioned that local high school students can’t graduate unless they plant a tree. Either way it’s gorgeous but it’s also on a very steep slope (at least from where I took this picture).

Chocolate Hills Adventure Park

I failed to properly pack for a 3.5 week trip where the weather ranged from HOT to downright COLD. So I wasn’t wearing pants or shorts to go zip lining which I haven’t done in years.

Chocolate Hills Adventure Park (CHAP) overlooks the chocolate hills if you climb the 200+ stairs to get to the top of the park. CHAP is exactly what the name implies – outdoor adventures like zip lining or bike zip lining. It’s actually a gorgeous park, I really wish I brought more outdoor gear because I would have done all the zip lining.

It was a bit cloudy when we got to the top but as you can see on the left hand picture, those are the Chocolate Hills! It’s named that because in the summer they turn brown but it’s an interesting thing because they are just 1000+ hills. There’s a better vantage point but that included more stairs and no one wanted to walk up more stairs.

Butterfly Garden

It’s a really small garden but the tour guides are hilarious. The Philippines has some huge butterflies. I have never seen butterflies (or even caterpillars) that big.

Thanks to our tour guide, I also become a butterfly. Plus the garden is beautiful.

Lunch cruise on Loboc River

The cruise was nice and went down the Loboc River. Filipino food was served for the buffet like pancit noodles and BBQ.

The water color was amazing and the trees just look so cool next to it.

Plus there was singing by some ladies who did some traditional filipino dances in traditional filipino clothing.

Python Sanctuary

The Python Sanctuary is interesting because it’s very small and the famous python that used to live there, died a few years ago so they have other pythons but not as large as the original famous one.

Snakes scare me but as happy as I look in this picture I was really yelling “IT’S TOO HEAVY GET IT OFF ME” because it’s 100 lbs. It’s really heavy and it doesn’t stop moving. I had to carry it because how many times in your life are you really going to have the chance to carry a 100lb snake?

So this doesn’t even cover all of what we did that day but these were definitely my favorite moments from the day trip. We stopped at some other churches and monuments but these were definitely my favorite.